


Ill-Fated

by anorchidisnotaflower



Category: Fight Club (1999), Fight Club - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Explicit Language, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Kissing, M/M, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-10
Updated: 2019-07-10
Packaged: 2020-06-25 21:27:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19754125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anorchidisnotaflower/pseuds/anorchidisnotaflower
Summary: "I stand out on the lawn and breathe in the steam of the factories, the distant scent of grime that’s home to all cities. I try to remember what it’s like to breathe on my own."What if the Narrator knew Tyler wasn't real the whole time?





	Ill-Fated

I’ve known him since the pitcher of beer on a sticky table, since the shared laugh on the airplane, since I found him curled up in the dirt beneath my window after I gained another black eye from some asshole in my fifth-grade class who I didn’t have the time to tolerate.

His nails are sunken into the ground and he looks like a scavenger rat, all bushy-haired with sharp eyes that know too much.

He tells me, “I was digging for a way out.”

I tell him to get the hell out of my backyard.

He stands up to leave, and when I turn to yell some more, he’s gone. Like a sick sort of magic in thin air.

And that’s when I know. And I’ve always known. Even when he slid his way back to my side, even when he looked at me across a bar booth the same way an author describes an eye-fuck.

Tyler isn’t real. Tyler doesn’t exist.

Now? Tyler’s gone.

* * *

He thinks he’s so smart. I know this because Tyler knows this.

He’s trying so hard to set me up. To string me along with his schemes, his grand plans for destruction and mayhem and borderline-anarchy.

And he’s right about one thing: I _do_ want this. Some part of me—localized in Tyler—wants all of this. So I let him play his games, and I pretend to know nothing at all.

It’s fun, after a while—acting ignorance. Playing 9-to-5 Jack, who just wants to work and sleep and forget his apartment blew up.

But I also like playing the version of me that Tyler wants: willing to fight, willing to bruise, willing to let go and hit bottom.

And then there’s some version between all of that. Maybe that’s the real me. The one who likes getting drunk and playing golf with factories. The one who relishes the smell of cigarette smoke but hates the burn of alcohol. The one who tugs teeth from his jaw while Tyler rests in the tub, when it all feels a little too domestic.

Maybe that’s me. But still—too much of it revolves around Tyler. I’m giving him too much power, too much time to gain control of my life. I have to start reminding myself who’s really in charge here—who really knows what’s going on.

That’s why I start carving Tyler’s name into the wood just beneath the bedframe. Once for every time I need to tell myself he isn’t real.

First: when he appeared on the flight.

Second: when he let me stay.

Third: when we fought. The first time. Every time since.

Fourth: when he let me adjust his bow tie, like we were familiar. Like we shared more than the same mind.

Fifth and sixth and seventh and eighth. Every time I think about him I carve and I carve until the wood is barely recognizable under all those letters, overlapping one another into curls and edges.

He spots me at one point, and I hastily try to shove the bed back into place.

“Trying to get into whittling?” he asks, cigarette bobbing between his lips.

I shrug, trying to play it off. Sure, I say.

His mouth quirks up but doesn’t quite grow into a smirk. “What does it say?”

Nothing, I reply, too quickly. _Fuck_.

He raises both eyebrows. “Really.”

Smoke curls out from between his lips and I try not to look.

Yep, I say. Just scratches. Just bored.

He eyes me for a moment, not moving that damn cigarette even though the ash on it is thick and crumbling. I need him to stop. I want him to—

What exactly _do_ I want?

He takes the cigarette out of his mouth, breaking eye contact. Taps it on the doorframe. We watch the ash fall together, and I imagine it spilling across the back of my hand. Tiny embers, tiny burns.

“Well,” he says. “Have fun.”

He doesn’t leave quickly enough. I collapse back on the bed, pushing my palms into my eyes. _Fuck fuck_ _fuck_.

I can’t want this.

* * *

I come home and he’s already cracking his knuckles and I hold my hands up in a position of surrender.

Tyler, I say. I don’t want to fight.

“C’mon,” he says, standing in front of me like an offering. “Just a couple punches. You seem tense.”

I’m not, I say, and he takes a swing that I barely dodge. It still skims my cheek, though, and I feel something like a rug burn.

Tyler, fuck, I hiss. What the fuck.

“We don’t need just one Fight Club, man!” he says, arms held out. “We can fight whenever. Not just Saturday.”

I realize, then, what he’s doing. He wants to open more Fight Clubs—with _my_ help. That’s not what I expected. I thought he would go behind my back, but…

Shit, Tyler, I mutter. I don’t think we should.

“What’s the point in creation if you can’t expand?” he asks.

I glance at him, and he’s still holding his arms out like he’s some kind of pariah.

You’re not happy with just beating on a couple guys in a local bar? I ask him.

“Don’t answer a question with a question,” he sighs, finally putting his arms down. “Just hit me. C’mon.”

Tyler, I say. I think you’re the one who’s tense.

He rolls his eyes. “What is the big problem?”

You’re the problem! I say, and then I realize we’re yelling at one another, and it’s just us in this big and empty house but I feel my throat turning raw.

“I just wanted you to be involved with this!” he says. “ _We_ did this!”

I don’t give a shit! Fight Club isn’t some business to be expanded, it’s a _club_ , I say.

He shoves me hard, once. “You’re a fuckin’ coward. It’s time to face bottom!”

I just look at him. I don’t know which version of me he wants anymore. The coward? No. The fighter? Still, no.

I’m starting to lose who I think I should be pretending to be.

I walk past him. He shoves me again, to the side, and I ignore him.

“You can’t keep running away!” he yells after me.

I head upstairs and sink back into the stiff mattress. Try to remember what I was trying to do here.

I carve his name below the bedframe ten times. Maybe more.

* * *

Later I’m at the kitchen table and it’s three in the goddamn morning and I can’t sleep, and I think it’s because he’s not home. Which doesn’t make any sense because he’s always “home,” really, but my mind and my mind are two different things and they can’t agree on anything.

The door creaks and I glance up when he walks in, gaze searching for something past me. He looks tired. More than me.

I don’t ask him what happened in words. I look: fresh cuts, bruises. He went out fighting behind my back and who’s going to pay for it?

He lights a cigarette, eyes downcast. “I needed to let off steam,” he says.

Without me, I catch myself saying.

He shrugs, flicking ashes. Not meeting my eyes, why?

“We don’t have to do everything together, you and I,” he says. “You said it earlier.”

Bullshit, I don’t say.

Instead I stand up, the chair screeching along the floor behind me.

He isn’t startled, but then again, it’s hard to startle Tyler fucking Durden.

I walk over to him until we’re both in the doorway and he’s finally meeting my eyes with a look on his face like he might laugh or shove me backward.

“You got something you wanna say to me?” he asks.

No, I say, and then I grab him around the ears and press his lips to mine.

It’s stupid and it’s meaningless and yet his fingernails, already digging into my back, send a jolt down my spine.

I just wanted this to stop. I just wanted him to keep believing I don’t know. I just wanted to find a way to justify late-night thoughts and dirty bathroom sessions and glances that should mean nothing.

He’s _me_. Why do I still want him?

Him, pushing me back up the stairs like he’s in control; him, finding the button on my slacks and letting them loose; him, sucking bruises into my neck that feel nothing like fighting.

Everything around me is Tyler and I want to breathe it all in. I hate myself for getting addicted to his smokescreens.

But smokescreens don’t hiss when their lips are bitten. Smokescreens don’t breathe out my name (the real one, the one only he knows) like a plea.

We touch and everything is fantasy, and I don’t want to suffer sick reality.

But the sick reality is this: the mattress creaks and splinters under us, the ceiling drizzles, and his hands are chafed against my back.

* * *

You’d think he would abandon me after. I’m just a body, after all—a mind sharing a space too small for two.

But he curls into my back, nails scraping softly along my shoulders. I think I feel his lips press to my neck, and I can’t help but shiver.

He doesn’t say anything, and then: “What was that for?”

I don’t know where to start with that.

I wanted to, I say.

He deserves a little honesty.

I feel his grip slacken around me, and as much as I want to leave and forget this ever happened, I panic and grab hold of his hands. He stills beneath my touch, and goddamn, how does he think he’s in control here?

Why did you let me? I ask him.

“You’re hard to say no to,” he murmurs.

Then he leans up on his elbows to peer down at me with a familiar smirk on his face.

“Now do you want to fight?” he asks.

I shove him backward. He laughs, finally getting what he wanted.

I snort, but I quiet down when his arms find their way around me again.

We fall asleep like that, or he does. I stay up all night, trying to take in breaths when he does, trying to remind myself that we’re the same.

* * *

Maybe he’s my sleepwalker. Maybe I’m his.

Either way I blink and I’m slipping off the mattress, sliding on shorts, slinking down the hall, taking the steps two at a time, closing the rickety door behind me not to make a sound.

I stand out on the lawn and breathe in the steam of the factories, the distant scent of grime that’s home to all cities. I try to remember what it’s like to breathe on my own, because I am. He’s a figment, I tell myself. He’s a shadow, an imaginary friend, a twisted delusion of a mind wrung out.

My toes flex on the stale grass, not yet wet with dew. I take these steps to remind myself that _this_ is what’s real and physical. Carving the wood doesn’t work anymore, of course, so I have to find another outlet. Another way to point at the obvious and tell myself it exists and he cannot.

In that moment, standing in the dying grass and breathing in stolen fumes, I feel like running.

But at the same time, I feel like sinking into the ground at my feet, hoping no one will find me.

That’s, of course, the perfect moment for him to make his appearance.

“Couldn’t sleep?” I hear him say, back by the thin porch.

I breathe. In. Out. In.

For a bit, I say.

I don’t need to turn to know he’s chewing on his lip, staring off at the factories. Considering a cigarette.

“You havin’ second thoughts?” he asks.

About what? I ask back. I crave the control I thought I had before. Now my mouth opens and whatever it wants comes spilling out.

I still don’t turn. He scratches his arm, absentminded.

“Living here,” he says, and that’s not quite what I expected. He still manages to surprise.

Not really, I reply.

“Not really,” he repeats. “Not a no. Not a yes.”

I shrug. Keep my eyes fixed firmly to the gray horizon.

He lets out a puff of air, like a snort without the feeling. “Still can’t make up your goddamn mind about anything,” he mutters.

I want to, I say, so quiet even I miss it.

I hear the creak of the wood under his feet, and for a second I’m afraid he’ll join me. I turn back to look—like Orpheus, ill-fated—and he’s sitting on the porch steps, Hawaiian shirt loose over his shoulders, and pulling out a cigarette.

He holds it out to me. Peace offering.

I step back toward him, take the seat next to him, grab the proffered cigarette. I give in so easily.

He lights it with the lighter, not quite touching me. I inhale. Exhale. In. Out.

He turns back to the horizon, letting his eyes fall back on the factories, and I let the smoke whirl around our heads. I offer the cigarette out to him, and he takes it.

We pass it back and forth, smoke it until it’s gone and the sun is shivering up behind the smoke stacks. He gently places his hand on my thigh, and it doesn’t feel suggestive. Just a comfort.

I still take it the wrong way, though, and lean in to capture the smoke from his lungs.

And he lets me do it anyway.

* * *

Marla enters the picture like a tumor does: slowly, and then all at once.

She calls, of course she does, and Tyler’s in the background, of course, and then he picks up the phone and I know he does, of course.

Halfway down the path from the house, I realize he’s listening to her rattle on about dying. I can’t rush back because he’ll know, but I can’t let him go after her, either.

Fuck it, I think, before running back, briefcase dropped and forgotten on the path.

The door bangs behind me as I skid in and spot him, caught like a kid with a hand in the cookie jar. He’s never looked so wide-eyed, phone loose in his hand.

I, I start. I forgot something.

He finally refigures his face into something more stern. “What?”

You know, I say. Work papers.

“Uh-huh,” he says. I notice the phone creeping back toward his ear.

Who’re you talking to, I ask.

He startles, phone jumping, before he suddenly hangs it up. “No one.”

His hesitation, his surprise—all make me realize that I’m back in control again.

I smirk at him. C’mon, Tyler. I know you were listening to Marla.

He frowns. “Who?”

I roll my eyes. The woman on the other line, genius.

He gives a slight shrug, trying to play it off. “I have no clue—”

Tyler, I say. There’s a lilt to my tone, a touch of something deeper and darker.

He glances at me, and I can still see surprise lurking at the corners of his eyes. “Don’t you have work?”

Not right now I don’t, I say, walking over.

He slinks back, just slightly. “Wh… What are you—”

C’mere, I say, reaching out.

He jerks backward. “C’mon, man, just chill out for a second.”

No, I say, snatching his arm. He tries to move away, but I hold fast, pulling him closer.

“Let go of my fuckin’ arm,” he growls. But I hear no fear in it—he’s bluffing, just like he always is.

Okay, I say.

I let go.

And then I make my move, leaning in and planting my mouth on his neck.

I can feel him startle, shiver, shake under my touch. He moves back, hesitant, until my teeth graze his skin and I hear him _breathe_ , feel the pulse jump between my lips.

“Hey…” he barely whispers. “Do… do that again.”

I do. He shivers.

I feel his arms wrap around me as I work my way across his neck. He’s so gentle, and here I am, marking bruises into his skin.

I feel him trying to guide us toward the stairs, but I stop him, planting my feet and letting go of his neck. I cling to his waist and turn us around so that’s he’s facing backward. I need to remind him who’s in charge this time.

Let me, I say, moving him backward, do all the work.

His mouth twitches in a half-smile. “You can be awfully pushy, you know that?”

I grin at him. Not a fan?

“No,” he says, and now it’s a full smile. “I am.”

I guide us up the stairs, keep teasing him with pecks along his nose, until his knees have hit the edge of the bed.

Now it becomes something much more, light presses of lips turning into teeth catching into hands pulling into curses spilling from open mouths.

I remind him, with every touch: Y _ou’re mine. You’re mine. You’re mine._

* * *

I find out weeks later that Marla died. It hits me all at once, the way I somehow knew it would, even though I only met her the one time. _This was your fault_ , something whispers to me, and I know it’s not Tyler but something else, something darker. Something that sounds like me.

I called her apartment, remembering that I should check in, when the landlord picked up and delivered the news with all the passion of a gas station cashier.

Tyler finds me later, still staring at the telephone like it can rewind time.

“Woah,” he says, waving a hand in front of my face. “Earth to Psycho Boy.”

Marla’s dead, I say.

“The chick on the phone?” he asks.

Yeah, I say.

I feel like air.

“How… How did you know her?”

I turn around and see him fidgeting. He’s… unsure. How to deal with this.

Support groups, I mutter.

“Huh,” he says.

I walk past him, planning to head outside and scream for a bit, when he calls out:

“Want to pay your respects?”

I stop in my tracks. Are you, I start. Are you asking me because you want to go with me?

I can feel him shrug, moving my own shoulders in time with his. “If you need that.”

I don’t need him. That’s the awful thing, the thing I keep avoiding when I grab at his hips and kiss him with blood on my mind. I _can’t_ need him.

Sure, I find myself saying, and I hate every part of me for it. Even him.

* * *

Tyler doesn’t have the best graveside manner, but I wasn’t really expecting him to. He stands there, burning cigarette after cigarette and dropping them in a steadily-increasing pile on the grass.

I’ve memorized her grave by now: MARLA SINGER. 1969-1999. R.I.P.

I keep reading it, though, tracing the edges of every letter and number like they’ll reveal something more, something unspoken about this woman I barely knew.

We can’t keep doing this, I say.

“What?” Tyler asks, smoke billowing up from his mouth to gather with the dim, gray sky. Maybe he’s causing the weather.

I mean we’re done here, I say. No more Fight Club. No more us.

Tyler has the audacity to laugh. “You fuckin’ kidding me, man?”

Yes, I say, and that makes him laugh harder.

“You,” he says, wiping his eyes, “are one funny guy. Really.”

I don’t know how else to make him listen, so I punch him, right in the chest. He breathes out all at once, the air forcing the cigarette from his mouth to the ground.

“Fuck,” he mutters, bent over. “What the fuck?”

He surges up and grabs me by the neck, forcing me down to the ground. I kick against his legs, pull at his arms, and we’re tangled up, fists flying at one another and inviting blood to surface.

I shove him away, finally, wiping at my bloody nose. Can’t you see a woman is _dead_ because of me?

“It wasn’t your fuckin’ fault,” he says, standing up and over me. “She was dying anyway.”

I scramble up and shove him down again. She could have fucking _lived_ if I hadn’t fucked you!

“And whose fault was that?” he screams back, punching at my shoulders.

I keep hitting him, hoping with each distant smack I’ll feel something again, but I don’t, I can’t.

Tyler shoves me off and stands up again, breathing hard. “You’re a nutcase.”

Well, you would know, I snort before I can stop myself.

He stills.

I decide, _fuck it_ , and say it anyway. What, you think I don’t know you aren’t real?

He isn’t moving, isn’t saying anything.

Fuck, Tyler, I say, what do you want me to say? That I’ve been oblivious this whole time to your master plan? Fuck you.

I don’t even know if he’s breathing. He’s just… staring at me. Blank.

Tyl—I start.

He says something, low and barely there.

What? I ask him.

“Don’t,” he says. “Don’t try to worm your way out of this one.”

And then his hands are around my throat, and I can’t breathe, and I can’t move, and everything is going black before I can say his name one more time.

* * *

The second I wake up I know Tyler’s royally fucked both of us up, because I’m on the floor of some cheap hotel room and the phone is off the hook and I can feel the ache of an oncoming migraine settle in behind my eyes.

I scramble up, call the front desk for a record of calls, and find out that almost twenty were made over the course of early morning.

What Tyler’s plotting, I haven’t the faintest, but I know it can’t be good. But then again—what power does he have beside me? I’m a cheap car employee with a nothing life and a nothing apartment that Tyler definitely blew up, living in a run-down shithole hou—

Wait. The bombs.

I knew Tyler could make them, I knew he _did_ , he isn’t real, but would he…

I rush out of the hotel in nothing but a pair of boxers and a robe and run and run and _run_.

* * *

By the time I make it back to Paper Street I can already smell that something’s wrong. There’s more than the scent of steam in the air—there’s an undercurrent, a tint like gasoline and a hint of what could be orange juice.

Tyler, you didn’t.

I rush in the door and into exactly what I expected: Tyler, glorious prophet, standing amid a swell of homemade bombs, timer in hand that’s ticking, ticking, ticking down.

Two minutes.

I don’t know where to start, so I try saying his name.

He just looks at me. His head is shaved, when did he have time to do that?

Just—put the timer down and we’ll talk, I say, desperately holding a hand out.

“Won’t make much of a difference,” he mutters. “It’s not a remote detonator.”

What he means: it’ll go off anyway.

What I mean: I don’t give a shit.

Tyler, please, just put it down and we’ll talk—

“You had your fuckin’ _chance_ ,” he hisses, vicious, and there, there’s the anger I expected. None of the apathy I’m getting.

I tried, I say, I tried but Tyler, you’re impulsive—

He scoffs. “Don’t psychoanalyze me, genius. You’re one to talk.”

Tyler, just, just shut up and listen to me—

“You don’t get to finish that,” Tyler says, stepping forward. The timer is held in his hand like a gemstone, all careful and reverent. “You fucked up. Now you pay the price.”

One minute.

I breathe, try to. In. Out. It feels more like wheezing.

You know we’re—

“Going to die? Is that what you were gonna say?” he asks. “Oh, boo-hoo. Everyone dies.”

I feel myself go completely, utterly still. You fucker, I say, quiet as a church.

He smirks. “What—”

I’m punching holes into his face before I can blink, throwing him to the ground and distantly watching the timer clatter somewhere behind us.

45 seconds.

He’s laughing, of course he is, and there’s blood everywhere, and I’m starting to lose momentum but I can’t stop now, can’t, have to show him that—

What? What am I even doing?

I stop, one fist raised and the other tangled in the front of his shirt. He’s still giggling faintly, face a mess that’ll probably swell up (if we had time, if we had any).

I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing, I whisper, finally being honest.

Tyler eyes me from under all that blood, and I think he’s smiling. “No one does.”

30 seconds.

I get off of him, grabbing the timer with shaking hands. Is there—is there a way to—

“No,” Tyler shrugs, rising to a sitting position on the floor. “Nothing.”

We can run, maybe, get out of here before… I trail off, knowing the answer is in the half-baked solution.

Tyler’s still smiling, but there’s no edge to it, not anymore. “You’ve got a lot of issues, you know that?”

I laugh, and it feels good. Feels like a release.

Yeah, I say. Yeah. C’mere.

15 seconds.

And Tyler slinks over, arms already pulling themselves around my shoulders, and I bury myself in his chest, breathing in deep the smell of smoke and soap and orange juice. Nothing about this is real, nothing, but maybe this warmth is, maybe this last moment of clarity is all that’s left, maybe neither one of us is here on the dirty floor of an abandoned house and maybe I’m just dreaming like I always do.

10 seconds.

Either way, I whisper his name, and he whispers mine back. It’s a promise, the kind where we both know this would never work and yet try anyway.

5 seconds.

I kiss him, right below the earlobe, and I think of Marla.

And Tyler? Tyler’s—

* * *

The news reports later that day say nothing about a fire, or an explosion, or an abandoned house on the corner of nowhere. The factories hear nothing over the churning of their machines, the closest neighbor a few miles away feels nothing in the soles of their feet.

But maybe no one cared enough to find out.

**Author's Note:**

> It's been so long, but I finally finished this little AU! The ending was the trickiest part for me to write, but I hope I did it justice. I might do some more exploring with this idea in the future and in another AU I've been thinking about, so we'll see what happens!


End file.
